Alms-giving
Buddhist monks in Luang Prabang go on a daily almsround at dawn to collect food. Traditionally this is "sticky" rice but sometimes money is given, too. This is not charity but is often perceived as giving the lay Buddhist an opportunity to make merit.
Who ARE these people?
OAT Tour members learning how to give alms (from our tour director)
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| Beginners |
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| Experts! |
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| The monks come from the right |
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| and from the left. |
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| Small bird in bamboo cage waiting for passionate release. Some released birds fly right back to where they were captured. Hey, free food... |
OAT Tour Scavenger Hunt in Lao Language
Our job, if we wanted to eat lunch, was to go to the early market and purchase one thing (for said lunch). We were given a slip of paper with a phonetic pronunciation of our query and 5000 Lao kip. Showing the slip to the vendor was no good; she doesn't read our alphabet. We had to ASK in Lao...
I was hungry already, so starving wasn't an option.. My purchase--"salee on", turned out to be baby corn!.The entire request was, "Khor sul salee on hapankip", but we asked our guide to give us the Cliff Notes version and he explained that "sales on" was the edible part of the sentence and "hapankip" (500 kip) was the business part.
One tour member had the word for a vegetable which, when mispronounced, meant prostitute! Dodged a bullet there!
Another asked for something totally different from what was wanted and which cost more than the 5000 kip he was given so he had to dig additional money out of his pocket. Fortunately he didn't come back with a new puppy or 10 caged birds...
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| Any "salee on" here? |
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| Dragon fruit--looks like poppy-seed bread inside |
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